Ethics Experts: Conflict-Of-Interest Protections Fall Short

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Publish Date:
January 11, 2017
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San Francisco Chronicle
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Summary

President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to keep his complex business interests from conflicting with his role as commander in chief drew skepticism bordering on incredulity Wednesday.

Just nine days ahead of his inauguration, Trump fielded a smattering of questions from reporters at his first news conference after the election before yielding the floor to Sheri Dillon, an attorney from the prominent law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius hired to assist the president-elect and his company, the Trump Organization, with conflict-of-interest issues.

“He’s thumbing his nose at the country,” said Robert Gordon, a professor at Stanford Law School. “I’ve never heard of a solution to the problem of financial entanglements being that you put your business under the management of your family. A benefit to your family is a benefit to you.”

Gordon confirmed remarks made by Trump and Dillon Wednesday that there was no law explicitly preventing him as president from running the country and his business simultaneously, “but I don’t want to do that,” Trump said.

The absence of an explicit rule is true, Gordon said, “but it’s a commonsense reading of the law that if all lower federal officials are subject to (conflict-of-interest laws), surely the highest is subject to the law.”

With few exceptions, unless a particular act falls within the reach of the federal criminal code, “the only remedy is impeachment,” Gordon said.

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